Bill would let suburbs opt out of regional transit authority

May 2, 2013

Riders board a SMART bus. A House bill introduced Thursday would allow suburbs across metro Detroit to opt out of paying for or benefiting from a new regional transit authority. / Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

A Wayne County lawmaker introduced a bill Thursday that would allow suburbs across metro Detroit to opt out of paying for or benefiting from a new Regional Transit Authority the Legislature approved last year after decades of failed attempts at coordinating and improving southeast Michigan’s public transportation options.

State Rep. Kurt Heise, R-Plymouth Township, one of the lawmakers who voted against the RTA, said Thursday that he wants to give local communities the right to withdraw or opt into the transit authority as communities now do with the suburban SMART bus system. All of Macomb County participates in SMART, but 53 communities in Wayne and Oakland counties opt out and don’t pay the property tax millage for suburban buses, leaving scattershot bus service and reduced funding for SMART’s operations.

“This legislation is meant to be a tool in the toolbox for local communities,” said Heise, who represents communities that have opted out of SMART’s millage. “These are the types of decisions that should be left to local municipalities. Local taxpayers also deserve this check-and-balance against the RTA if it goes ‘off-track.’ This is their way to get off the bus if the system fails us.”

Critics immediately denounced the proposal, noting that metro Detroit was the nation’s last big-city region to create an RTA, and then only after more than two dozen attempts failed in the last 40 years. The RTA board had its first meeting last month and ultimately will ask voters to pay a regional tax — perhaps a vehicle registration fee in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties — to build a new rapid-transit bus system and force coordination between SMART and the Detroit Department of Transportation.

Megan Owens, executive director of Transportation Riders United, said the RTA was created without the opt-out provision to prevent weaknesses that hurt SMART’s ability to provide service.

“The idea of the RTA is to put together a system that brings the whole region together,” Owens said. “It’s not going to be the same thing for every part of the region, but it recognizes that our lives don’t end at our cities’ boundaries, and our transportation shouldn’t either. I’m optimistic there are enough regional leaders who recognize the value of this type of coordinated planning that this won’t pass, but it is a shame that there are still some thinking in this parochial way.”

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A spokesman for Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican who backed the RTA as a way for southeast Michigan to improve its substandard public transportation and qualify for new federal funding for rail and modernized bus rapid transit lines, said Thursday that Snyder wouldn’t comment directly on Heise’s bill.

“In order for southeast Michigan to be successful, we must move forward with the RTA,” spokesman Mario Morrow said. “The governor is focused on making what was passed work.”

A spokesman for Mayor Dave Bing, who took considerable political risk in supporting the RTA against critics who said it would lead to a loss of control over funding and bus service in Detroit, declined comment Thursday.

State Sen. Bert Johnson, D-Highland Park, was more critical of Heise’s legislation, House Bill 4637.

“It’s precisely what’s wrong with this environment, that there are people who still think in those terms,” Johnson said. “I doubt very seriously whether there are members of his community that are making this a priority. It’s a threat of a prolific nature to the conversation about metropolitan Detroit as a region coming back.”

But Heise said voters were never given a chance to vote on the RTA — approved in the lame-duck Legislature last year — and the law only gives communities the choice to fund or not fund projects through tax proposals at the ballot box.

“The hardworking taxpayers of southeast Michigan deserve protections from programs that are untested, and to have the final say in joining a massive regional taxing authority,” Heise said. “We already have the right to opt-out of SMART; our communities should have the same option with the RTA.”